Alain Prost's car ran out of fuel on the finishing straight of the last lap. Instead of retiring, Prost got out of his car and tried to push it to the finish, to great applause from the crowd. The finish line was too far, though, and he never reached it. He was classified sixth in the race, and he was running third when his car ran out of fuel, and he was passed by Nigel Mansell and René Arnoux. as the seventh-placed car was a lap behind. Rosberg entered the last lap ahead of Prost so was classified 5th despite stopping first.

Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna, Keke Rosberg and Alain Prost were all running out of fuel right at the end of the race- and all barely made it to the finish line except Prost, who did not make it after trying to push his car to the finish line and lost 3 places. Senna swerved his Lotus sideways frantically to the finish line on the pit straight to get the last drops of fuel into the valves of his Lotus's Renault engine. Piquet was running out of fuel on the straight after the second chicane and he too frantically swerved his Williams sideways and had to turn his Honda engine's boost way down to get the car to finish, which he did.

The grid represented the first all-McLaren front row since the 1972 Canadian Grand Prix. It was also Keke Rosberg's only pole position with the team and the 5th and last pole of his F1 career.